In recent years, the media industry has expanded its horizons beyond traditional analog technologies. Audio, photographs, and even feature films are now being recorded or converted into digital formats. Digital media's increasing presence in today's society is not without warrant, as it provides numerous advantageous over analog film. As users of the popular DVD format well know, digital media does not degrade from repeated use. Digital media can also either be delivered for presentation all at once, as when leaded by a DVD player, or delivered in a stream as needed by a digital media server.
As would be expected, the viewers of digital media desire at least the same functionality from the providers of digital media as they now enjoy while watching analog video tapes on video cassette recorders. For example, a viewer of a digital media presentation may wish to mute the audio just as one might in using analog videotapes and videocassette recorders. Currently, this is performed by adjusting the viewer's volume controls. However, as the server is unaware that audio information is not desired by the viewer, the server still continues to transmit audio information to the viewer. In a distributed digital media environment, the resulting waste in available bandwidth on the digital media server is considerable.